So what did you expect?

I didn’t even bother to watch this game, so confident was I that the Warriors would finish off the Grizzlies and advance to the Conference Finals for the first time in my tenure as a fan. (In fact there were other reasons as well; see below.)

I did manage to hear the last half of the 4th quarter on the web while wandering around the grounds of the Coppola Winery with my main squeeze. NBA League Pass was streaming the Memphis broadcast, not the Warriors’, which was disappointing at first, then kind of fun as we repeatedly heard the play-by-play guy tell us that Steph Curry was shooting a 3 and then say, very sadly and quietly, “Good.”

Down the stretch the BFA* just plain tore the Grizzlies’ hearts out, starting with a 63-foot swish at the 3rd quarter buzzer. There is something special about that young man. He is going to be a star someday.

So it’s on to the Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets, who survived a crazy rollercoaster of a 7-game series against the LA Clippers. I had kind of hoped the Dubs would have a chance to avenge last year’s first-round defeat, but the Clips flamed out in spectacular fashion, blowing a huge lead in Game 6 and then choking like Mama Cass in Game 7. So it’s hard to complain too much.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling extremely confident of how the Warriors will do against the Rockets. Although they were a higher seed, I don’t think the Rockets are actually as good as the Grizzlies, and we saw how that went once the Dubs took a couple of punches and got their shit together. The basketball gods hate arrogance, but this seems like a perfectly reasonable time to expect success.

Also, the night the Dubs closed out the Grizz was also the night I finally got engaged to the love of my life. So there’s that.



* baby-faced assassin